“Wicked Problems,” Public Policy, and Administrative Theory

Abstract

As societies worldwide struggle to address what policy analysts call “wicked problems” such as world hunger, malnutrition, and ecological sustainability, analysts from a variety of perspectives have questioned the administrative state’s abilities to deal with them. Ascendant since the early 1990s as a prescription for remedying these shortcomings is a market, technocratic, and non-deliberative theory of administration that some have called “neo-managerialism” and others the “managerialist ideology.” This study uses European attitudes toward promoting the use of genetically modified (GM) foods as a “policy window” for exploring how well or ill-suited the neo-managerialist philosophy informing the U.S. government’s promotional campaign was with the factors driving European opposition to GM foods. Causal modeling of the “calculus of dissent” that led to a the European Union (EU) moratorium on GM foods suggests that deliberative (rather than neo-managerialist) theories of administration are better suited for the “collective puzzlement of society” that wicked problems require.

Addressing Complexity in Environmental Management and Governance

“…Most importantly, we are able to describe similarities and differences of problems, such as the reduction of migratory obstacles for fish or the implementation of wastewater treatment plants, in a much more specific way. This eventually helps us to define specific management strategies to address these problems such as conflict solving or modeling, instead of generally referring to a varying degree of uncertainty, among others [7,32].…”

“…Most importantly, they have emphasized the need to learn and act under conditions of (informational) uncertainty. They have also acknowledged that various problems lead to different needs for action under uncertainty [7] and learning for solutions [10,40]. Interestingly, however, both psychological research and political cooperation theory suggest more differentiated management strategies for solutions depending on different dimensions of complex problems.…”

“…First, researchers continuously observe that sustainability problems are complex or "wicked". Examples refer to various environmental fields such as the management of fresh waters [1][2][3], climate change [4,5], or food and agriculture [6][7][8], among others. Second, researchers suggest closely related political models to address complex or "wicked" problems.…”

“…Second, researchers suggest closely related political models to address complex or "wicked" problems. Popular concepts focus on reflexive [9,10], participatory-deliberative [7,11,12], and different forms of network or interactive forms of governance [13][14][15][16]. By implication, researchers also question more hierarchical, especially science-driven models of political problem solving [6,17].…”

“…This research takes into account that most pressing societal problems in fact deny any easygoing solutions [18][19][20][21]. Indeed, public authorities have to deal with various uncertainties and need to learn continuously when addressing these problems [7,10,[22][23][24][25]. To enable such learning processes, the above mentioned researchers convincingly argue that participatory instead of hierarchical modes of governance are essential.…”